Hello, and welcome to my Hecarim build! Hecarim is a jungler who has very powerful ganks and has high mobility, allowing him to dominate in team fights as well as small skirmishes. This build focuses on abusing his strong early game while setting up for a beefy mid game and a powerful late game.

Guide began: 4/19/12
Guide published: 4/23/12
Guide last updated: 4/24/12

Recommended

Greater Mark of Desolation We take Greater Mark of Desolation because the added armor penetration increases the damage of Rampage, our main damage ability, and gives us more damage from Sheen/ Trinity Force procs.
We take Greater Seal of Armor so the extra armor will give us extra durability against AD champs.
We take Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist to give us a nice boost to our magic resist for late game against caster champions.
Finally, we take Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed to give us even more movement speed and to gain extra damage from our passive, Warpath. Hecarim excells from his movement in the field and helps him close gaps from enemies so he can land his Rampages. These quints also scale very well with Devastating Charge as the quints are a percent increase rather than a flat increase.

Other Options

I would say that Greater Mark of Armors are a sub-optimal choice, but depending on a person's play style, they may want to sacrifice some armor to replace seals with mana regeneration seals, as Hericam can become mana hungry if you use his abilities too frequently.
Mana regen per level are also not on my list, but they are a better option than the flat regen seals in my opinion, but this difference can be changed dependent on play style. I only have these runes in this section because Hecarim is fairly mana dependent and to use him to his full potential you will need plenty of mana. If you find yourself struggling with mana you can substitute a few of these runes into your build.
Flat cooldown glyphs are somewhat viable, as they will allow you to use your Rampage ability more frequently while jungleing and in combat for a faster jungle speed and higher DPS. The drawback with these is that Rampage's cooldown can not be shorter than 1 second and you will also be lacking in magic resist in later levels.
Greater Quintessence of Desolation While these runes do offer a very tempting amount of armor pen, the movement speed adds more control of the enemies while also granting some damage via Warpath.

Why Offense?

We utilize the offense tree mainly for the 10% armor pen from Weapon Expertise , the extra speed from Ghost with Summoner's Wrath , and the bonus 1.5% damage from Havoc . The additional bonus AD and AS are simply icing on the cake for us.

Why Defense?

In the defense tree, we take Bladed Armor for a slightly faster jungle as well as a safer jungle from Tough Skin . These points may be moved to other masteries, but these are a favorite of mine when jungleing. We also take a point in Summoner's Resolve for the additional gold from Smite. I personally like this mastery as it grants a small boost to gold income. The point from this may also be moved to a different option if you prefer to not use this mastery. Putting 3 points in Hardiness is my personal bread and butter for jungleing; the additional 6 armor help you to survive in the jungle and still provides defense late game.

Why Utility?

The utility tree gives us additional movement speed from Swiftness and increased neutral buff duration, a jungleing standard, from Runic Affinity . I put the first 4 points into Good Hands and Improved Recall , as Good Hands reduces your time dead, which can make a big difference (How many games do you honestly not die?). I take Improved Recall as the slightly shortened channel time can save your life in certain sticky situations, but both of these masteries can be switched based on personal preference.

Other Viable Options

Other Possible options, in order of viability, would include 9, 12, 9; 0, 21, 9; 0,9,21; 20,10,0; and 20,1,9.

Starting Items

• 
  I recommend these starting items as they are a fairly starting item set for jungleing and provide a safe and effective jungle.

First Back

• Grabbing boots on your first trip back is a MUST. The added movement speed gives you bonus damage, as well as a huge boost to ganking ability. If you are facing an overly AD heavy team with little CC, you may want to build Ninja Tabi here.

Continued Purchases

• Next build the Sheen for the added damage on mele's between abilities. Comboing Rampage and Sheen/ Trinity Force procs make for a dangerous amount of damage.
  
• After the Sheen, if you did not build Ninja Tabi, build Mercury's Treads for the movement speed and the tenacity. CC and slows can shut down Hecarim, so beware!
  
• Now we will begin to work on our Trinity Force, starting with the Phage component.
  
• Before we finish our Trinity Force, we will build a Sunfire Aegis for the extra health and armor. You can start your cape with either the Giant's Belt or the Chain Vest dependent on the situation, but I prefer to get my resistances up.
  
• Finishing our Trinity Force will give us a nice boost to our heath and all around stats. This item is a MUST on Hecarim.
  
• Building the Force of Nature will grant us a large amount of magic resist and health regen as well as some movement speed. Again, I prefer to build the Negatron Cloak to get my resistances higher before I buy the Regrowth Pendants.
  
• We build the Bloodthirster next for its high end damage and life steal for sustain.
  
• Finishing the build is the Phantom Dancer. This item gives us a boost to our attack speed to help with securing kills and bonus movement speed for more control. This item comes last as I don't believe it has a place in the build until late game.

At level one, we put a point into Rampage, as this is our main damage ability. At level two, we take Spirit of Dread to gain a little more damage and utilize the self healing while in our jungle and when we will gank later. At level three, we put another point into Rampage so we can clear the rest of our jungle quicker; at this point, if one of your lanes is in need of a gank, you can swap this point out for a point into Devastating Charge and gank.

Rampage is our main damage ability, and we will be maxing it by level 9.

Spirit of Dread is our self heal and sustain; we will max this second.

Devastating Charge is our chasing and initiating ability for ganks, we will take a point in this early, but will not max it until level 18.

Onslaught of Shadows is our ultimate; just like every other champion, we will put a point into this every time we can.

• Rampage will activate our Sheen/ Trinity Force, so try and throw basic attacks in between Q's for extra damage output.
• This ability can be used to clear minion waves and creep camps very quickly late game.
• This ability resets Hecarim's attack timer, so using this ability right after meleing in the jungle will utilize this ability to it's fullest.

• This ability heals us for all damage take by surrounding enemies, including damage from Smite; this means that in a sticky situation, smiting a creep with Spirit of Dread active can give you a boost to your healing. (133-261 additional health.)
• This ability works well with Sunfire Aegis as the additional 35 damage per second is converted into an additional 10.5 health per second per target before resistances. (That's about equal to 26 health per 5 per target in range assuming a 50% damage reduction.)

• This ability can gain damage and knockback from distance traveled with Onslaught of Shadows.
• Using this in combination with Ghost and other speed buffs can make for powerful gank initations.
• Very useful for chasing down enemies. You can run through a running enemy and then push him back into your team for an easy kill.

• The fear can be utilized to shut down some ult's such as Absolute Zero.
• Using the fear and the push from Devastating Charge is a very easy way to initiate on a gank.
• This can also be used as an escape ability.

• Gives extra incentive for building movement speed.
• Extra source of damage. Gives even more damage from using Devastating Charge, Ghost, the speed shrines on Dominion, ect.
• Built in Ghost mechanic by passing through units.

Recommended

• Ghost is typically a must on Hecarim. The speed boost synergizes very well with his other abilities and his champion style in general.

• You are a jungler.

Other Good Choices

• Flash is a good summoner spell in general. It is a get-out-of-jail-free card for any poor positioning and can be used to escape abilities such as Cataclysm and Event Horizon.

• Exhaust is a great spell used for shutting down an enemy carry or securing a kill. I would only take this spell if noone else is.

• Ignite can be used to easily secure kills. I personally don't like this spell on Hecarim, but you may take it if you would like.

• Cleanse removes cc and is a great spell. I personally do not like this spell as it can in essence be "bought" if you buy a Quicksilver Sash.

• Since it's buff, Heal is a viable spell in my opinion, but it is more useful for either your support and/or carry (if you are running double heal bot lane).

• Teleport can be used for quickly arriving in a lane that is in dire need of help or can be used for split pushing late game. I personally do not recommend this spell as it is a better choice for champions in the lane, but it can be used for a jungler to teleport to wards and gank.

Don't Take These

• You are not supporting anyone. If you are having mana problems, replace some seals with mana regen per level.

• This spell gives little benefit to Hecarim. You are much better taking any of the spells in the above sub-section.

• You are not a support. The only way I could see this spell even being remotely viable is if noone picked support, but even then I wouldn't take this spell.

• You aren't even in lane, why would you even consider this?

• Go troll somewhere else.

The jungle route I recommend following is the standard blue buff route.

1. Start at the blue golems. Get a leash from mid and/or top.
2. Continue onto wolves.
3. Move onto wraiths.
4. Next, kill the double golems.
5. Move onto Red Buff. You may change the order of the double golem and Red Buff.
6. Wraiths will have respawned by now; kill them.
7. Finish off the fresh wolf camp and go back!

One thing you must never forget: GANK FOR YOUR LANES. If you don't, then you are not helping your team at all. If you need to gank at level 3 rather than in Rampage, put a point into Devastating Charge for initiating the gank and to close the distance easily.

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